Mutant moments

Some of you may have found your way here via your purchase of John Cooper’s (excellent) Scream City 4. Your sense of disappointment is no doubt profound. Many apologies.

However, now you’re here, it would be remiss of me not to give you a few tidbits to accompany the article in the mag on various artist label samplers. So over the next few days (or possibly weeks, given my usual posting rate), I’ll post some further info and some aural accompaniments to my musings.

First up, Mutant Disco. As I mentioned in the article, half the songs on the original 6-track album featured Kid Creole (or August Darnell as he’s known to his mum) in one guise or another. It’s really time for a reappraisal of Darnell, I think. The thing is, the nice people at Strut seem to think the same way, and are working hard to restore him to his rightful place in the disco firmament via this timely compilation. At the moment, Kid Creole is plying his trade in the lead of the long-running theatrical revue Oh What A Night, and you’ve really got to admire the guy on one level at least. Whereas most former stars whose careers have taken a downturn would rant/rail/resort to drink, Darnell, like the old Broadway stager he so closely resembles, dusted himself off and declared “the show must go on”. Good on him. It shows a work ethic that that the likes of Pixie Geldof would do well to emulate. It also led to a situation straight out of the pages of Viz a few years ago, when (former NYC sophisticate and darling of the no wave/disco scene) Darnell was appearing in OWAN at Blackpool’s Grand Theatre, and took up temporary residence in the leafy environs of Poulton-Le-Fylde, as documented by the local paper. (Even more bizarrely, he was apparently a one-time resident of Rotherham, having married a Yorkshire lass...)

He's all over Mutant Disco; as well as his own track, he produced Coati Mundi and executive produced Don Armando's 2nd Avenue Rhumba Band (see below) on the original six-track release; the expanded reissue contains seven tracks that feature his input, including great tracks by Cristina.

While Darnell worked with many of the Ze acts, he wasn’t responsible for the production on Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s Funky Stuff; instead the production duties were shouldered by Steven Stanley. (And it’s a bit of a cheat, because this track wasn’t on the original release of Mutant Disco. It is on the CD re-release however, and it’s such a chooon that it deserves a showcase here.) While there's the faint whiff of that early eighties "noble savage" thang surrounding much of Descloux's output, she can be forgiven, as (unlike, say, The Slits, who were mining a similar seam of nostalgie de la boue) she really did walk it like she talked it, eventually taking up residence in Africa with the Marxist scion and Rough Trade producer Adam Kidron.

Adam Kidron really deserves a whole post to himself, so expect that at some point over the next nine months. In the meantime, here are two tracks from Mutant Disco... more compilation goodies soon come.


Download Deputy Of Love by Don Armando's Second Avenue Rhumba Band (mp3) (deleted Aug 2009)

Download Funky Stuff by Lizzy Mercier Descloux (mp3) (deleted Aug 2009)

Buy Ze stuff

It's just been brought to my attention that nobody has been able to download any mp3s since at least last week, as I've exceeded my file host's bandwidth allowance. Apologies are due. My allowance will be reset in the next day or two, so you should be able to download stuff after that. HOWEVER, this also means that I'm gonna have to delete some of the stuff from Feb 2007 onwards.

Instant Comma

Greatly enjoying Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend, one of the greatest (and only) songs about an obscure point of punctuation to date. I can see this bunch soundtracking a Wes Anderson movie at some point. Possibly even starring in one. They've got that Yale freshman, Jason Schwatzman thing down.




In fact, I'm wracking my brain to think of other punctuation-related songs. Off the top of my head, I can only think of Ranking Full Stop by The Beat and Message Oblique Speech by Associates. Of course, you could also have anything by Question Mark and the Mysterians. Or Willie Colon. Any more for any more?

Golden Section

It's rare that Section 25 get played on the radio. It's rarer still that they get played on The Nation's Favourite (i.e. Radio 2). But that happened last night on the Radcliffe and Maconie show when The Charlatans elected to play Looking From A Hilltop in the show's regular "Show and Tell" slot. Listen again here for one week only. It's about an hour and 40 minutes in.

Or there's always the video (below). I particularly like the ending, where Lee Shallcross (?) climbs into a car with a driver that looks suspiciously like Lindsay Reade. If you look closely, you'll see that the passenger door isn't quite closed as the car trundles into the distance, and Lee is manfully hanging on to it to stop it swinging open. Presumably, the budget didn't run to a second take.

Party Polemical Broadcast

TV Party- which has had a mention on these pages before- is available to view for a limited time at http://www.pitchfork.tv/node/773

Orange crush

I was a little too young to fully appreciate the impact of the short-lived but celebrated Postcard record label ("The Sound of Young Scotland") in its heyday, but I followed the subsequent careers of the label's acts (Aztec Camera, Orange Juice, Paul Haig of Josef K, and, to a lesser extent, The Go-Betweens) throughout my adolescence, and it's hard to open a magazine these days without contemporary bands like Franz Ferdinand or Camera Obscura acknowledging the debt they owe to Alan Horne's pioneering imprint.

So it was fortuitous for me that two of the labels mainstays (the aforementioned Paul Haig and Edwyn Collins of Orange Juice) played within 8 days of each other recently in Edinburgh. It was even more fortuitous that Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera is currently deputising as guitarist in Edwyn's band, and so within a short space of time, I was lucky enough to see the three major artists associated with Postcard up close and personal. In addition, a companion noted that Dave Ruffy was tanning the skins in Edwyn's band. I was aware of his past as drummer for The Ruts (and I know people who swear that The Ruts vs. The Mad Professor's Rhythm Collision Dub is the greatest work of art in western history- hello Richard Oakes) , but was unaware till today that he had also served time with Aztec Camera as well as playing with Edwyn in the days when he was signed to Alan McGee's Elevation. To complete the Postcard-tastic experience, Malcolm Ross who played with Josef K, Aztec Camera and Orange Juice was spotted in the audience... surely some enterprising promoter can rope in Robert Forster and put on a Postcard revue?

I've already written a brief review of the Haig show below. However, for sheer emotional impact, Collins' and Frame's appearance at the Queens Hall last Monday had the edge; emotional because this was one of Collins' first live appearances since two well-documented and near-fatal brain haemorrages and a consequent bout of MRSA two years ago. The strokes he suffered have left him extremely unsteady on his feet, he had trouble speaking clearly and spent the gig, quite reasonably, perched on a stool; however the fact that he was present in any short of shape was nothing short of miraculous, especially as he had been unable to speak or walk two years ago. It was entirely correct, therefore that he and his band were greeted with the sort of standing ovation normally reserved for the likes of Nelson Mandela. I saw the show with a couple of people involved in rehabilitation therapy, and while their attendance was out of musical rather than medical interest, it was heartening to hear their positive prognoses on Edwyn's condition.

You can download a recent podcast where Roddy and Edwyn converse here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/audio_video/podcasts/music/article2871300.ece

It's of interest partly because of the content, but also because you can hear the extent of Edwyn's recovery and his struggle to overcome his limitations. You also get to hear that his familiar hyuk-hyuking laugh is still intact.

The audience's appreciation was rewarded with three gems straight out of the gate, Falling and Laughing and Poor Old Soul, two of the early Postcard singles, and What Presence? from Orange Juice's purple patch c. 1983. "It's good to be back," he intoned with some difficulty, to deafening cheers. He wasn't quite able to hit the high notes on Rip It Up or A Girl Like You, but then again he wasn't really able to before his stroke, either. The interplay between Frame and Collins was quite touching, nearly thirty years of friendship and amicable rivalry informing their onstage rapport.

The show concluded with brisk run-throughs of Blue Boy and Don't Shilly Shally; kudos to him for coming back on to do an encore, something even the able-bodied Paul Haig didn't manage the week previously.

Now, at this stage in the blog post, you're probably expecting an MP3, right? I know that's why most of you come here. I'm not under any illusions. You're probably hoping for a rare B-side. Or possibly Simply Thrilled, Honey. Well, instead you're getting a sensitive and reverential cover of the song that made Edwyn an overnight millionaire. Please see below for A Girl Like You by a little-known band called The Shirehorses*. Enjoy.

Download A Girl Like You by Edwyn Bobbins (The Shirehorses) mp3 (deleted Aug 2009)

* aka Mark and Lard

Hood winks

Those of us with fond memories of Thunderbirds may have been experiencing deja-vu while reading recently of newly-appointed, chrome-domed Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel...













Nouvel

The Hood